This blog is intended to go along with Population: An Introduction to Concepts and Issues, by John R. Weeks, published by Cengage Learning. The latest edition is the 12th (it came out in 2015), but this blog is meant to complement any edition of the book by showing the way in which demographic issues are regularly in the news.

If you are a user of my textbook and would like to suggest a blog post idea, please email me at: john.weeks@sdsu.edu

Tuesday, June 26, 2012

US Supreme Court Rules on the Arizona Immigration Law

Yesterday the Supreme Court handed down its ruling on the Arizona Immigration Law. If you saw nothing more than the headline in the New York Times, you might agree with the Arizona Governor Jan Brewer that this was a victory for Arizona.

The court unanimously sustained the law’s centerpiece, the one critics have called its “show me your papers” provision, though they left the door open to further challenges. The provision requires state law enforcement officials to determine the immigration status of anyone they stop or arrest if they have reason to suspect that the individual might be in the country illegally.

However, on issues like this I defer to my son, Greg, who had a slightly different take on the ruling in his blog today:

So expect more lawsuits. Arizona Governor Jan Brewer calls that victory, but I doubt she really believes that. Despite all the rumors that the court seemed sympathetic to Arizona, this decision says that Arizona overstepped its constitutional bounds by a lot. Every state that copied SB 1070 will have to go back to the drawing board.For North Carolina, where I live, I would guess this means the legislature will not move forward because the legislative leadership was waiting for a SCOTUS ruling before doing anything.

There are many other lawsuits against this Arizona law, and against similar laws in other states, that are still in the legal pipeline, so yesterday's ruling is not even close to being the last word.

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Weeks Population Companion App

The app provides learning objectives and main points for each chapter, along with a quick POPquiz to test knowledge about key population information, and there is also a link to the WeeksPopulation blog.